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AN 


ADDRESS 


BEFORE    THE 


LITERARY   SOCIETIES 


HAMILTON    COLLEGE, 

JULY  23,  1844. 


BY    HORACE     GREELEY. 

n 


PUBLISHED      BV      REQUEST, 


CLINTON,  N.  Y. 
1844. 


•  •         • 


••••••••   •••  1  -•  ••  •      •  •••  -  .' 


Andrews,  Prentiss  Sf  Studley,  Printers. 
Boston:  11  Devonshire  Street, 


fTf 


'-O 


Hamilton  College^  Oct.  4,  1844. 
Horace  Greeley,  Esq,. 

Sir  :  —  The  Phoenix  Society  of  Hamilton  College,  through  the  under- 
signed, their  Committee,  tender  their  unanimous  thanks  for  the  able  and 
entertaining  Address  you  delivered  before  them  at  their  last  Anniversary, 
and  request  a  copy  af  the  same  for  publication. 

With  sentiments  of  respect,  we  have  the  honor  to  be, 
Your  obedient  servants, 

Sumner  Stow  Ely,     \ 

John  T.  Clark,  >  Committee, 

Chauncey  L.  Hatch,  ' 


JVewj  York,  Oct.  15, 1844. 

Gentlemen  :  —  I  transmit  to  the  printers,  at  your  request,  the  manuscript 
of  my  Address  before  your  Societies  on  the  eve  of  your  last  Commencement. 
I  do  this  the  more  readily  since  I  am  sure  your  reiterated  invitation  to  pub- 
lish is  not  a  matter  of  course  —  not  a  reluctantly  proiFered  compliment.  I 
stated  to  you,  in  reply  to  a  similar  invitation,  the  day  after  you  listened  to 
this  Address,  that  I  had  no  desire  to  see  it  printed,  and  that  I  had  abundant 
opportunities  to  obtain  of  the  public  a  hearing,  without  tasking'your  cour- 
tesy. I  then  intimated  that,  as  some  of  the  suggestions  of  my  discourse 
were,  if  not  novel,  at  any  rate  very  different  from  those  usually  presented 
on  such  an  occasion,  you  might  very  naturally  hesitate  to  endorse  them. 
But  I  was  relieved  by  your  prompt  response  that  such  publication  would  not 
in  any  way  render  you  responsible  for  the  sentiments  of  the  Address,  while 
you  were  desirous  of  considering  more  carefully  and  leisurely  before  passing 
judgment  upon  them.  The  public,  therefore,  will  rightfully  censure  me 
only  if  it  shall  discover  any  thing  heretical  or  offensive  in  the  following 
pages. 

I  apprehend  youVill  not  find  this  Address  *  entertaining,'  though  you  so 
characterize  it  in  your  note.  I  am  quite  sure  that  entertainment  was  very 
far  from  my  thoughts  in  writing  it.  Indeed,  had  I  not  been  impelled  by  far 
different  considerations,  I  suspect  I  could  not  have  found  leisure,  in  snatches 
of  half  hours  from  the  incessant  labors  of  this  most  exacting  summer,  to  pre- 
pare it  at  all.  But  I  deeply  felt  that  there  were  truths  vital  to  the  useful- 
ness and  well-being  of  the  Educated  Class  which  had  not  been  so  often  nor 

f^80307 


so  emphatically  presented  as  the  interests  of  Mankind  require.  How  far  1 
have  succeeded  in  evolving  such  truths  I  leave  to  your  judgment  and  that  of 
the  few  beside  you  who  will  condescend  to  read  these  pages.  I  know  well 
that  there  is  another  side  to  the  picture  I  have  presented  —  that  the  Scholar 
has  vast  fields  of  usefulness,  even  under  all  existing  disparagements,  and 
that  they  are  by  no  means  unimproved.  But  all  that  need  be  said  on  this 
has  been  well  said  from  Commencement  to  Commencement  for  generations. 
If  I  have  been  able  to  present  any  new  ideas,  or  give  fuller  expression  to  old 
ones,  be  yours  the  credit  and  the  advantage ;  if  I  have  wholly  failed,  be 
mine  alone  the  censure. 

I  am  yours,  most  truly, 

Horace  Greeley. 
Messrs.  S.  S.  Ely,  J.  T.  Clark,  C.  L.  Hatch,  Committee. 


ADDRESS. 


Gentlemen  of  the  Phcenix  and  Union  Societies : 

From  the  fierce  turmoils  and  hot  strifes  of  the  passing 
day,  I  come  at  your  bidding  to  spend  an  hour  with  you  in 
the  interchange  of  more  quiet  thought,  returning  on  the 
morrow  to  my  wonted  sphere  and  calling.  I  appear  be- 
fore you,  not  as  a  scholar  among  his  equals,  to  descant  on 
themes  common  and  dear  alike  to  all,  but  as  one  whose 
chief  teacher  has^  been  the  rugged  world,  and  whose  little 
all  of  knowledge  has  been  gathered  amid  its  rude  jousts  and 
stern  encounters.  You  will  not  expect  me,  therefore,  if 
you  give  me  credit  for  sincerity  and  purpose  in  embracing 
this  opportunity,  to  address  you  in  the  language  or  unfold  to 
you  thoughts  peculiar  to  the  halls  of  learning.  Were  he 
some  specimen  of  our  fading  Aboriginal  Race  whom  you  had 
thus  summoned  before  you,  you  would  hardly*anticipate  any 
thing  more  than  an  outward  deference  to  the  genius  of  the 
place  —  a  relinquishment,  for  the  occasion,  of  the  blanket,  the 
tomahawk  and  the  war-paint  —  not  of  whatever  is  intrinsic 
and  essential.  He  could  only  hope  to  justify  your  daring 
choice  by  speaking  to  you  his  own  words,  —  by  an  utterance 
from  the  depths  of  his  own  being.  And  thus  I,  standing  be- 
fore you  in  some  sort  a  humble  representative  of  that  large 


class  sometimes  termed  the  self-educsited,  by  others  (perhaps 
more  properly)  the  wneducated,  shall  speak  to  you  from  the 
heart  of  that  class, —  truths  which  may  or  may  not  have  long 
since  resounded  through  the  halls  of  our  Universities,  agitat- 
ing their  venerable  dust,  but  which  in  either  case  are  certain 
ere  long  to  make  themselves  heard  and  respected. 

I  have  not  hesitated  to  choose  for  my  theme  on  this  occa- 
sion —  The  Discipline  and  Duties  of  the  Scholar, 
vast  and  lofty  though  it  be,  and  imperfect  as  have  been  my 
oJ>jyprtunitiiBi^  fdr  its  thorough  appreciation  and  discussion. 
Few-aS'ar^.  the  fragments  of  hours  that  I  have  been  able  to 
'3ei2:e  for  its  cbntemplation,  I  am  well  aware  that  on  its  proper 
apprehension  depends,  in  great  degree,  the  Progress  and  the 
Well-being  of  the  Human  Race.  You  need  not  fear,  my 
friends !  that  the  advantages  of  a  thorough  Education,  or  of 
a  thoroughly  Educated  Class,  will  be  undervalued  in  our  day, 
and  especially  by  us  weary  marchers  and  combatants  along 
the  parched  highways,  beneath  the  fervid  sun  of  active  life, 
who  have  been  able  but  to  scoop,  as  it  were,  here  and  there 
a  handful!  from  the  grateful,  invigorating  waters  of  Know- 
ledge, as  they  danced  and  bubbled  across  our  too  eager,  head- 
long course.  O,  not  from  our  panting  ranks  will  ever  arise 
the  cry  that  solid  and  symmetric  Learning  is  a  boon  to  be  re- 
jected or  lightly  prized  !  The  small  coins  of  knowledge  which 
we  awkwardly  handle  and  dispense  are  constantly  reminding 
us  of  the  priceless  ingots  of  golden  treasure  which  for  us  lie 
buried  in  the  far  recesses  of  halls  like  these,  from  which  a 
grim  Fate  has  •forever  debarred  us.  Limited  as  may  have 
been  our  opportunities,  it  is  not  to  us  a  sealed  truth  that  the 
Present  is  only  to  be  rightly  read  and  interpreted  in  the  full 
light  reflected  from  the  Past.  We  are  not  unaware  that  this 
uneasy,  jostling  throng  of  to-day  is  but  a  reproduction,  with 
slight  permutations,  of  the  sweating,  striving  crowds  of  a  thou- 
sand yesterdays,  to  be  again  and  again  represented,  in  the 
several  throngs  of  countless  to-morrows.     We  are  well  aware 


that  faithful,  graphic  History  is  a  diviner  as  well  as  a  judge  — 
that  her  magic  mirror  gives  back  the  faces  glowing  around  us 
as  well  as  the  forms  in  dust  beneath  us,  and  that  he  who 
rightly,  intelligently,  reads  of  Aristides  and  Cleon,  of  Brutus 
and  Catiline,  of  smooth  Augustus  and  deified  Nero,  may  turn 
at  once  from  the  musty  chronicle  and  see  the  living  charac- 
ters stalking  eagerly  around  him.  Must  he  not  discern  the 
Phocion  of  our  Republic  in  that  noble  relic  of  our  heroic 
elder  time,  the  oft-baffled,  defeated,  decried,  but  dauntless, 
bravely  struggling,  unconquerable  octogenarian  of  Quincy? 
Might  he  not  be  tempted  at  last  to  suspect  that  the  difference 
between  one  age  and  another  exists  quite  as  often  in  its  chroni- 
clers as  in  its  actors,  and  that  the  perishing  hieroglyphics 
of  Tlascala  and  Quito  would  reveal  heroism  as  devoted  and 
admirable  as  any  of  that  more  felicitously  recorded  by  Homer 
or  Polybius,  had  we  but  the  skill  to  interpret  them  as  thor- 
oughly ?  In  short,  it  is  not  alone  the  Educated  who  have 
learned  that  a  knowledge  of  Man  is  the  central  truth,  to 
which  the  study  of  Men  and  their  acts  must  be  subsidiary  ; 
and  that  the  mingled  web  of  Divine  beneficence  and  Human 
infirmity,  termed  History,  is  to  be  rightly  scanned  only  in  pro- 
portion as  we  apprehend  its  beginning  and  its  destined 
conclusion. 

There  is,  there  must  be,  a  preeminently  Educated  Class 
among  us  —  I  do  not  merely  admit  the  notorious  fact ;  I  per- 
ceive the  vital  necessity.  Whether  the  distance  between  that 
class  and  the  many  should  or  should  not  be  as  broad  and 
palpable  as  at  present,  is  not  now  the  question.  My  theme 
implies  its  existence,  and  assumes  that  the  greater  number  are 
relatively  uneducated.  However  we  might  desire  the  universal 
diffusion  and  possession  of  the  knowledge  now  confined  to 
this  class,  we  know  it  is,  and  long  must  be,  impossible.  Its 
attainment  exacts  a  devotion  of  time  and  of  means,  to  say 
nothing  of  tastes  and  habits,  which  can  only  be  given  by  the 
comparatively  few.     My  theme,  then,  involves  the  compound 


8 


inquiry  —  what  should  be  the  nature  of  the  education  of  the 
more  cultivated  class  ? —  under  what  conditions  should  Learn- 
ing be  acquired  ? —  what  ends  should  it  contemplate  ? —  what 
advantages  secure  to  its  possessors  ?  I  shall  proceed  to  dis- 
cuss it. 

I  would  insist,  then,  as  the  primary  requisition  in  the 
Discipline  of  the  Scholar,  on  a  Thorough  and  Harmonious 
Development  of  the  Physical  Man.  I  place  this  first,  not 
as  more  important  than  Moral  and  Intellectual  culture,  but  as 
the  proper  foundation  of  all  culture  unto  perfection.  You  need 
not  cite  me  to  instances  of  intellectual  giants  who  are  physi- 
cally dwarfs  —  of  puny  Genius  and  hypochondriac  Wit  —  you 
may  as  well  tell  me  that  the  foetid,  pestilent  purlieus  of  a  great 
City  are  favorable  to  health  and  longevity,  because  men  have 
risen  there  to  stature  and  vigor  and  died  in  hale  old  age.  As 
well  tell  me  that  the  bivouac  and  the  battle-field  are  favorable 
to  long  life,  because  men  have  died  peacefully  at  ninety,  after 
a  half  century  of  camps  and  sieges.  These  are  exceptions, 
which  rather  establish  the  rule  than  invalidate  it.  *  A  sound 
mind  in  a  sound  body'  —  that  is  the  order  of  Nature  —  you 
may  find  a  sound  mind  elsewhere,  but  it  will  be  most  un- 
fitly and  inconveniently  bestowed.  The  body  can  endure  a 
divorce  far  better  than  the  mind.  In  fact,  we  see  bodies 
breathing,  moving,  acting  all  around  us,  which  seem  to  per- 
form their  proper  functions  tolerably  with  the  aid  of  very  little 
mind  —  almost  none  —  but  a  healthful,  clear  mind  in  a  dis- 
eased, decrepit,  decaying  body  is  a  far  more  pitiable  spectacle. 
It  is  a  diamond  in  the  clutch  of  a  lunatic  —  to  be  gazed  at  a 
moment  in  wonder,  then  hurled  into  the  depths  of  the  sea. 
It  is  a  freight  of  the  wealth  of  the  Indies,  embarked  in  a  tot- 
tering wherry,  which  is  certain  to  sink  in  the  first  tempest. 
When  I  look  around  me,  and  recall  the  many  noble,  and 
brilliant,  and  greatly  useful,  who  have  sunk  after  a  meteor- 
like career  into  premature  graves,  under  the  assaults  of 
diseases   insensibly  contracted  during  their  years   of  study 


9 


and  mental  acquisition,  —  diseases  from  which  any  tolerable 
knowledge,  any  careful  investigation  of  the  laws  of  Man's 
physical  being  must  have  preserved  them  —  I  am  impelled  to 
sound  the  alarm  of  danger  alike  to  teachers  and  to  students 
—  to  plead  for  the  generation  now  in  process  of  develop- 
ment and  the  generation  to  follow  —  and  to  warn  the  direc- 
tors of  Education  of  the  fearful  responsibility  which  rests 
upon  them  —  a  responsibility  which  it  is  but  charity  to  pre- 
sume very  many  of  them  do  not  even  dimly  comprehend. 
For,  assuredly,  they  could  not  know  that  the  hundreds  of 
young  men  committed  by  anxious  love  to  their  charge  were 
growing  up  in  almost  total  ignorance  even  that  they  had 
physical  constitutions  to  nurture  and  bring  to  vigorous  matu- 
rity—  in  utter  ignorance,  quite  commonly,  of  many  of  the 
inflexible  laws  on  which  their  physical  well-being  depend  — 
and  not  adopt  some  adequate  measures  to  counteract  and 
avert  the  danger.  And  yet,  how  little  is  systematically  done, 
how  little  is  even  consistently,  authoritatively  said,  in  our 
seminaries  of  Learning,  of  the  necessity  and  nature  of  a  true 
Physical  Education  ?     Shall  this  deficiency  continue  ? 

True  Education  is  Development.  It  does  not  create  the 
statue  froin  the  marble  —  it  only  finds  it  therein  and  exposes 
it  to  the  unimpeded,  admiring  gaze.  But  in  what  do  our 
Educational  processes  tend  to  develope  the  physical  man  ? 
From  the  high,  uncomfortable  bench  on  which  the  child  sits  for 
hours  at  the  common  school  in  abhorred  constraint  and  suffer- 
ing, watching  in  envy  the  flitting  of  every  bird  by  the  window, 
to  the  highest  University,  so  called,  we  find  scarcely  a  recog- 
nition that  his  mind  is  encased  in  a  tenement  of  flesh  and 
blood.  He  has  teachers  of  Reading  and  of  Grammar  —  Pro- 
fessors of  Mathematics  and  of  Ethics  —  of  Languages  and  of 
Metaphysics  —  but  the  teachers  of  the  laws  of  his  oWn  struc- 
ture and  relations  to  Nature  —  the  Professors  of  Health,  of 
Strength,  of  Longevity,  I  think  are  mainly  yet  to  be  appoint- 
ed. Yet  this  ought  not  to  be.  The  position  of  the  young 
2 


10 


student  is  surrounded  with  peculiar  perils.  From  the  field,  the 
forest,  the  bustling  ways  of  home  and  neighborhood,  he  is 
transplanted  at  once  to  academic  shades,  whose  genius  de- 
mands quiet,  meditation,  seclusion.  No  longer  is  the  climbing 
of  rugged  hills,  or  the  leveling  of  stubborn  woods,  the  pre- 
paration for  the  evening's  study  and  the  night's  rest.  He  is 
instantly  confronted  with  two  formidable  dangers  —  that  of 
falling  into  habits  of  physical  indolence  and  excessive  study, 
inducing  indigestion  and  its  long  train  of  enfeebling  horrors ; 
or  his  lithe  frame  revolts  at  the  galling  bondage,  and  he 
becomes  a  hater  of  books,  a  neglecter  of  studies,  and  gradu- 
ally addicts  himself  to  habits  of  turbulence  and  wild  excess. 
Henceforward  his  career  need  not  be  indicated  —  its  course 
and  its  end  are  inevitable. 

I  must  press  this  point  farther,  for  I  feel  that  a  reform  with 
regard  to  it  is  most  essential  to  the  usefulness  and  honor  of 
our  seminaries.  In  too  many  instances  has  a  Collegiate 
course,  in  view  of  all  its  consequences,  proved  a  positive 
curse  to  a  large  proportion  of  the  Class  which  sanguinely 
entered  upon  it  as  the  unmistakable  high  road  to  eminent 
usefulness,  recompense  and  fame.  Alas !  a  deadly  serpent 
lurked  in  those  calm,  bright  bowers  which  seemed  to  their 
first  eager  glances  so  alluring.  A  few  days  of  eager  study 
jaded  their  spirits  and  unstrung  their  nerves ;  a  languor  and 
lassitude  crept  over  them ;  they  fell  into  the  company  of  those 
who  had  traveled  that  road  before  them,  who  suggested  — 
"  All  study  is  dry  work  —  let  us  solace  ourselves  this  evening 
with  a  bottle  and  a  feast."  Thus  is  laid  the  foundation  of 
habits  which  have  dragged  too  many  a  youth  of  rare  promise 
down  to  an  untimely  and  dishonored  grave  —  which  have 
quenched  the  fond,  proud  hopes  of  admiring  relatives  in  a 
deluge  of  sin  and  shame. 

Now  it  is  the  idlest  folly  to  waste  words  in  declaiming 
against  these  evils  —  we  must  trace  them  to  their  source  and 
apply  there   an   adequate  preventive.     We  must  begin   by 


11 


teaching  our  Young  Men  the  nature  of  their  own  frames,  and 
the  shocking  violence  they  do  to  that  nature  by  overtaxing  its 
powers,  and  then  drugging  it  with  narcotics  and  stimulants  to 
reanimate  them.  We  must  demonstrate  to  them  the  fact  that 
any  use  of  stimulants  is  a  certain  and  fearful  evil  —  that  the 
effect  we  term  drunkenness  is  only  a  benevolent  effort  of 
Nature  to  expel  the  monster  which  has  been  treacherously  ad- 
mitted to  her  most  sacred  and  vital  recesses  —  and  that  the  evil 
commences  with  the  first  particle  of  such  substances  which  is 
thrust  upon  her,  and  the  penalty  is  signal  and  certain  although 
the  second  glass  were  never  taken.  All  these  truths  and  the 
kindred  objections  to  narcotics,  may  easily  enough  be  scien- 
tifically demonstrated  —  the  mischief  is  that  they  are  not.  A 
man  properly  instructed,  and  as  yet  uncorrupted,  would  no 
more  think  of  swallowing  Alcohol  than  live  coals  or  arsenic. 
And  yet  many  have  actually  acquired  the  basest  of  habits  —  that 
of  partaking  of  notoriously  hurtful  substances  merely  to  produce 
a  temporary  and  pernicious  elevation  of  the  spirits  —  within 
the  precincts  of  our  very  Universities  !  Shame  is  it  to  human 
ignorance  —  shame  especially  to  those  whose  duty  it  was  to 
dispel  that  ignorance  in  the  case  of  these  victims,  and  yet 
neglected  it !  They  cannot  be  excused,  but  we  may  drop  a 
tear  of  pity  for  the  victim  of  their  neglect,  so  distorted  and 
misdeveloped  that  he  knows  how  to  construe  Greek,  yet  does 
not  know  enough  to  reject  and  loathe  Tobacco  ! 

You  have  already  anticipated  my  statement  that  to  a  true 
and  healthful  development  of  the  Man,  I  deem  a  constant 
participation  in  Manual  Labor  indispensable.  Labor  !  blessed 
boon  of  God,  to  alleviate  the  horrors  and  purify  the  tenden- 
cies of  our  fallen  state  !  when  shall  its  benefits  and  its  joys  be 
brought  home  to  each  and  to  all  ?  We  may  make  it  a  curse 
and  a  burthen  by  so  regarding  it,  as  we  may  any  other  bless- 
ing from  Heaven,  but  the  truth  is  irrepressible  that  only  he 
who  is  familiar  with  Labor  and  loves  it  can  either  improve  or 
enjoy  life.     The  man  whose  only  stimulant  to  exertion  in  aity 


12 


field  is  the  hope  of  individual  gain,  can  hardly  have  risen 
above  the  condition  of  a  slave.  We  must  learn  to  be  true 
workers  —  our  frames  need  it  —  our  unperverted  impulses 
demand  it  —  our  very  souls,  if  unstifled,  cry  out  for  it.  Most 
earnestly,  then,  do  I  record  my  protest  against  the  all  but 
universal  prescription  which  divorces  entirely  profound  Study 
from  Manual  Labor  —  which,  in  its  attention  to  the  intellec- 
tual and  moral  nature  of  the  student,  forgets  that  he  has  also 
a  physical  frame  to  be  developed  and  invigorated.  Of  course, 
you  will  not  understand  me  as  assuming  that  the  usual  routine 
of  student  life  forgets  or  disregards  the  necessity  of  physical 
exercise  —  I  know  better.  I  will  not  doubt  that  wherever 
thoughtful,  conscientious  and  cultivated  men  have  charge  of 
the  education  of  youth,  there  are,  there  must  be,  abundant 
inculcations  of  the  necessity  of  exercise  and  the  value  of 
health ;  also  of  the  danger  of  losing  the  latter  through  the 
neglect  of  the  former.  I  will  not  doubt  that  abundant  oppor- 
tunities and  facilities  for  exercise  are  everywhere  afforded. 
Yet  what  is  the  result?  Do  the  mass  of  our  young  men 
finish  their  studies  with  stronger  constitutions,  sturdier  frames, 
more  athletic  limbs,  than  they  brought  away  from  their  pa- 
rental firesides  ?  Not  within  the  sphere  of  my  observation  — 
far  otherwise.  I  have  known  many  dyspepsias,  consumptions, 
debilities,  which  traced  their  origin  to  the  seminaries  :  I  do 
not  remember  any  that  were  cured  there ;  I  have  known  the 
stout  lad  in  the  district  school  who  graduated  a  feeble  invalid 
from  the  university.  My  conviction  is  that  the  Physical  de- 
partment of  Education  has  decidedly  retrograded  since  the 
days  of  Greek  freedom  and  glory.  Our  prevalent  error  is  not 
one  of  method  and  detail  —  it  is  fundamental.  We  have  lost 
the  true  basis  ordained  of  God  for  the  harmonious  and  health- 
ful development  of  the  whole  human  being,  in  separating  the 
education  of  the  Head  from  the  education  of  the  Hands.  We 
have  dared  to  disregard  that  Divine  fiat,  first  of  punishments 
JWr'tiicrefore  first  also  of  mercies  — '  In  the  sweat  of  thy 


13 


face  shalt  thou  eat  bread ! '  Shunning  this  appointed  path, 
we  have  sought  out  inventions,  which  we  term  Exercise, 
Recreation,  Relaxation.  Heaven  placidly  but  inexorably  disal- 
lows them.  I  do  not  say  that  for  the  cramped,  soul-dwarfed, 
undeveloped  miner,  delving  for  six  days  of  each  week  in  some 
stinted  Egyptian  labyrinth  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  there 
may  not  be  appropriate  recreation  in  the  free  air  and  sunshine. 
Malign  Circumstance  has  grudged  him  a  full  development  — 
his  class  are  significantly  advertised  for  as  '  Hands  wanted ' 
—  not  men.  But  to  the  true  and  whole  man  each  successive 
duty  is  the  proper  relief  from  the  preceding,  and  in  the  regu- 
lar alternation  of  labors  —  now  those  which  tax  mainly  the 
Intellect,  next  those  which  appeal  mainly  to  the  Sinews  —  is 
the  needed  relaxation  best  attained.  Thus  only  shall  Life  be 
rendered  consistent  and  harmonious  —  thus  shall  each  hour 
be  dignified  and  rendered  heroic.  The  division  of  the  Race 
into  two  unequal,  contrasted  classes  —  the  few  Thinkers,  the 
many  Workers  —  has  been  and  is  the  source  of  many  and 
sore  evils,  including  the  loss  of  the  fitting  and  manly  inde- 
pendence of  each.  It  is  the  source  of  infinite  servility,  false- 
hood and  mean  compliance.  Not  till  we  shall  have  emanci- 
pated the  Many  from  the  subjection  of  taking  their  thoughts 
at  second-hand  from  the  Few,  may  we  hope  to  accomplish 
much  for  the  upraising  of  the  long  trampled  masses.  Not  till 
we  have  emancipated  the  Few  from  the  equally  degrading 
necessity  of  subsisting  on  the  fruits  of  the  physical  toil  of  the 
Many,  can  we  secure  to  the  more  cultivated  and  intellectual 
their  proper  and  healthful  ascendency  over  the  less  aflJluent  in 
mental  wealth.  The  plowman  recognizes  and  appreciates 
Genius,  Talent,  Learning ;  but  he  finds  that  these  are  too 
often  directed  to  the  acquisition  of  wealth  and  luxury  by 
means  which  add  little  to  the  aggregate  of  human  comforts, 
and  rather  subtract  from  his  own  especial  share  of  them.  The 
reprobate  dreads  the  rebuke  of  the  anointed  reprover  of  sin ; 
but  says,  ^  He  will  hardly  venture  to  arraign  pointedly  the 


14 


transgressions  of  one  who  contributes  liberally  to  the  salary 
which  barely  supports  his  expensive  family.'  Thus  the  divorce 
of  Learning  from  Manual  Labor  —  the  absolute  dependence  of 
the  Educated  on  the  Uneducated  class  for  the  means  of  sup- 
plying its  physical  wants  —  becomes  the  source  of  endless  and 
fatal  compromises  of  Principle  and  perversions  of  Intellectual 
power. 

It  avails  nothing  to  point  me  to  the  failure,  if  it  shall  be  so 
termed,  of  past  attempts  to  reunite  Study  with  Physical  exer- 
tion—  the  affluent  mind  with  the  ready  and  skilful  hand. 
These  failures  only  prove  the  inadequacy  of  the  effort,  not 
that  the  object  is  unworthy,  nor  even  unattainable.  They 
have  been  impelled  too  often  by  low  ideas  of  their  own  scope 
and  purpose  —  by  a  consideration  of  the  necessity  to  the  stu- 
dent not  so  much  of  Labor  as  of  Bread.  Commenced  in  this 
spirit,  the  number  of  workers  will  inevitably  dwindle  till  only 
those  labor  who  must  subsist  on  the  fruits  of  that  labor ;  soon 
the  class  distinction  of  Gentlemen  and  Peasants  reappear; 
invidious  comparisons,  sneers  and  sarcasms  beget  hatreds  and 
collisions ;  and  one  class  or  the  other  —  probably  both  — 
make  their  exit ;  the  institution  explodes  ;  and  the  superficial 
multitude  unhesitatingly  pronounce  the  idea  of  uniting  Labor 
with  Study  proved  impracticable  and  absurd ! 

The  fatal  error  here  was  obviously  that  of  putting  the  new 
wine  into  old  bottles.  The  impulse  to  the  enterprise  was  not 
a  conviction  of  the  necessity,  healthfulness  and  dignity  of  La- 
bor —  not  even  the  idea  of  Duty  as  commanding  a  participa- 
tion in  the  toil  needful  to  the  sustenance  and  comfort  of  Man 
—  but  at  bottom  the  pauper's  necessity,  the  slave's  dread  of 
the  lash.  This  may  facilitate  and  ensure  the  production  of 
corn  —  never  of  true  men.  Not  until  Labor  shall  be  joyfully 
and  proudly  accepted  as  a  genial  and  beneficent  destiny  —  as 
the  needful  exercise  and  complement  of  our  else  undeveloped 
or  perverted  faculties  —  may  we  rationally  hope  for  any  per- 
manently satisfactory  result. 


15 


And  here  you  will  permit  me  to  hazard  a  criticism  on  so 
much  of  our  educational  processes  —  no  great  portion  of 
any  college  course,  I  will  hope  —  as  are  undertaken  for  the 
sake,  it  is  said,  of  '  disciplining  the  mind.'  I  ask  a  student- 
friend  why  he,  who  is  aspiring  to  the  Christian  Ministry, 
should  devote  so  much  time  to  a  science  so  little  pertinent  to 
his  future  calling  as  Mathematics,  and  he  answers  that  the 
study  of  Mathematics  is  an  admirable  discipline  for  the  mind  ! 
Need  I  say  to  you  that  I  neither  appreciate  the  force  of  the 
reason  nor  discern  the  benefits  of  the  discipline  ?  I  do  not 
say  that  this  or  any  other  science  may  not  be  eminently  calcu- 
lated to  subserve  the  purpose  contemplated  —  I  simply  demur 
to  the  necessity  or  fitness  of  pursuing  mental  discipline  apart 
from  healthful  mental  activity  in  the  sphere  of  practical  life. 
Does  the  youth  contemplate  the  pursuit  of  Astronomy,  Engi- 
neering, or  any  sphere  of  usefulness  requiring  the  aid  of  the 
exact  sciences  —  then  let  him  devote  his  student  years  in 
part  to  Mathematics,  and  master  them  thoroughly.  But  if  he 
contemplate  pursuing  either  of  the  three  leading  professions, 
Theology,  Law  or  Physic  —  I  distrust  the  wisdom  of  such  a 
devotion  of  his  time.  This  life  is  too  short  to  justify  the 
acquisition  of  abstruse  sciences  on  such  grounds.  The  mind 
is  best  disciplined  when  it  finds  its  pleasures  in  its  duties  — 
when  all  its  laborious  acquisitions  are  turned  to  direct  and 
palpable  account  —  when  its  every  impulse  is  toward  utility 
and  beneficence.  We  give  tl^e  child  playthings  because  we 
know  not  or  have  not  what  we  should  give  him  —  did  we 
know  all  things,  command  all  things,  we  should  improve  his 
every  desire  to  subserve  directly  some  useful  end.  His  toys 
would  be  tools,  or  at  least  demonstrations  of  some  truth  adapt- 
ed to  his  opening  mind.  He  should  be  wiser  for  every  walk 
—  more  skillful  for  each  hour's  diversion.  In  our  ignorance 
or  fond  thoughtlessness,  we  waste  half  the  golden  opportuni- 
ties of  the  most  impressible  period  of  life,  and  misimprove  a 
portion  of  the  remainder.     It  were  well  to  remember  that  a 


16 


benign  Creator  has  enfolded  the  mental  casket  we  contem- 
plate, and  that  it  needs  not  to  be  pressed  and  fashioned,  but 
simply  developed.  The  disciphne  it  requires,  if  unstifled, 
unperverted,  is  induction  into  whatever  is  peculiar  to  that 
sphere  of  laudable  endeavor  to  which  it  is  specially  devoted. 
And  here  let  me  state  fairly  the  objection  of  the  Utilitarian 
school  to  the  acquisition  of  the  Dead  Languages,  which  I  find 
often  commented  on  and  controverted  without  being  at  all 
apprehended.  We  do  not,  we  never  did,  deny  the  utility  of 
these  Languages  to  many  —  it  would  ill  become  us  to  do  so 

—  ill  become  any  rational  beings.  We  admit  —  nay,  insist, 
that  there  are  large  classes  to  which  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
one  or  more  of  the  Languages  in  which  the  noblest,  most 
inspiring  ideas  of  Antiquity  lie  inurned,  is  indispensable.  The 
Christian  theologian  needs  a  mastery  of  Greek  and  Hebrew; 
the  Physician,  the  Botanist,  the  thorough  Lawyer,  of  Latin. 
But,  beyond  and  above  these,  the  world  needs  and  is  deeply 
indebted  to  the  illustrious  body  of  Scholars,  Learned  Men, 
who  as  Professors,  (O  most  desecrated  term  !)  Historians, 
Philosophers,  Poets,  Critics,  are  constantly  irradiating  and 
instructing  the  Present  by  the  light  of  the  Past.  Noblest,  least 
obtrusive  of  our  teachers,  —  we  could  not  dispense  with  these 

—  we  are  in  no  danger  of  honoring  them  too  highly.  But  it  is 
not  given  to  every  man  —  it  is  permitted  to  few  —  to  be  of 
these,  and  it  is  preposterous  to  subject  the  multitude  of  com- 
paratively educated  persons  to  their  ordeal  in  the  idle  hope  of 
producing  any  such  result.  You  cannot  make  Scholars  of 
these  —  you  have  enough  to  do  to  render  them  passable  attor- 
neys and  doctors,  in  the  common  way.  And  if  they  are  to  be 
such  and  nothing  more,  you  must  allow  me  to  believe  that 
their  College  years  might  be  better  devoted  than  to  the 
acquisition  of  Greek  and  Latin  —  oftener  practically  forgotten 
in  two  years  than  really  learned  in  three.  The  simple  and 
notorious  fact  that  they  usually  are  so  forgotten  —  that  they 
are  to  most  educated  men  (so  called)  in  the  busy  walks  of 


17 


life  but  a  foggy  reminiscence  of  dull  days  wasted  and  dry 
tasks  slighted,  is  their  sufficient  condemnation, 

The  truth  is  that  the  fatal  evil  of  pecuniary  dependence  is 
not  always  unfelt  even  by  those  who  hold  the  responsible 
position  of  directors  of  the  highest  education  of  our  youth. 
A  President  or  Professor  who  should  frankly  tell  the  parents 
of  a  proffered  student  that  their  son  might  make  an  excellent 
blacksmith  or  carpenter,  but  would  neither  be  eminent  nor 
happy  at  the  bar  nor  in  the  pulpit,  would  probably  incur 
resentment  and  a  withdrawal  of  patronage  —  and  yet  how 
often  ought  such  truth  to  be  frankly,  kindly  told  !  It  would 
frequently  save  much  waste  of  energies  and  means,  much 
weariness  and  heart-ache.  The  true,  though  rugged  man 
who  has  nobly  gathered  a  competence  by  following  the  plow, 
would  feel  offended  if  assured  that  his  son  was  so  fit  for  no 
other  vocation  as  that  of  a  farmer  —  though  that  were  a  gen- 
uine tribute  of  respect  to  the  dignity  of  the  vocation,  and  the 
honest  worth  of  the  youth. 

We  are  here  confronted  by  the  low  idea  which  everywhere 
prevails  of  the  true  rank  of  useful  manual  toil  —  by  none  so 
cherished,  as  by  those  who  themselves  toil,  except  by  the  empty 
demagogue  who  windily  babbles  in  bar-rooms  of  the  rights 
and  dignity  of  Labor,  hoping  to  compass  thereby  the  means 
of  avoiding  Labor.  The  farmer  will  not  feel  gratified,  though 
he  should,  if  assured  that  he  can  give  his  son  no  fitter,  no 
better  caUing  than  his  own  ;  the  hope  of  the  family  must  be 
trained  to  the  chicanery  of  Law  or  the  futility  of  Medicine 
in  order  that  he  may  duly  honor  his  kindred,  though  he  may 
be  reluctant  to  enter,  or  at  best  have  manifested  no  genius  or 
taste  for  the  calling  thus  thrust  upon  him.  This  is  in  the  true 
spirit  of  the  illiterate  farmer  who  insisted  on  having  a  sermon 
in  Greek,  on  the  ground  that  he  paid  the  clergyman  for  the 
best,  and  would  have  it.  Thus  our  higher  Education  becomes 
a  bed  of  Procrustes  —  excellent  for  the  few  whom  Nature 
has  just  adapted  to  it  —  but  a  very  different  affair  for  all  be- 
3 


18 


side.  We  shall  learn  yet  to  study  the  unfolding  genius  of  the 
youth  —  to  be  guided  by  this  rather  than  attempt  to  overrule 
it  —  and  to  leave  to  the  directors  of  Education  a  larger  dis- 
cretion in  the  premises  than  they  have  usually  hitherto  enjoyed. 
In  the  lamentable  divorce  of  Learning  from  Labor  —  of  the 
highest  Intellectual  culture  from  the  greatest  Industrial  capa- 
city and  efficiency  —  do  I  detect  the  origin  of  that  deplorable 
discord  which  prevails  between  the  teachings  of  our  Schoolmen 
and  the  edicts  of  Legislators,  between  the  lessons  of  our  Liter- 
ature and  the  spirit  of  Communities  and  States,  with  regard 
to  Political  Economy.  Vainly  do  our  Colleges,  the  wide 
world  over,  indoctrinate  nearly  all  the  leading  minds  of  the 
age  with  the  distinctive  principles  of  Adam  Smith  and  his 
followers  —  their  labor  may  be  lighter  than  that  of  Sysiphus, 
but  their  fortune  is  inevitably  like  his.  On  a  few  minds, 
remarkable  rather  for  speculative  than  for  practical  ability, 
they  make  a  durable  impression  ;  but  with  the  majority  their 
plausible  inculcations  are  overborne  by  the  observation  and 
experience  of  a  few  succeeding  years.  Those  originally 
most  captivated  by  the  theory  of  'Laissez  /aire,'  soon  dis- 
cover, on  passing  out  into  the  actual  world,  that  all  Life  is,  all 
Legislation  must  be,  in  contradiction  to  its  spirit.  A  man 
who  should  be  left  to  grow  up  on  this  fundamental  principle 
of  the  Free  Trade  philosophy,  would,  if  by  some  miraculous 
chance  he  survived  to  maturity  at  all,  be  a  most  unmitigated 
savage,  and  a  bad  specimen  even  of  that  forlorn  condition. 
A  great  Nation  which  should  really  and  fully  adopt  the  cor- 
responding theory  of  National  Economy,  and,  by  dispensing 
with  all  Industrial  and  Commercial  Legislation  of  its  own, 
leave  its  Labor  and  Trade  wholly  at  the  mercy  of  Foreign 
regulation,  would  soon  have  little  left  wherewith  to  tempt  the 
cupidity  of  Foreign  policy.  There  never  yet  was,  there  never 
can  be,  a  Government  of  a  civilized,  accessible,  enlightened, 
wealthy  Nation  which  acted  consistently  and  thoroughly  on 
the  principle  of  Free  Trade  for  a  single  generation  —  no,  not 


19 


for  ten  years.  Superficial  men  may  dilate  on  the  unsafeness 
of  following  Theory,  the  discrepancies  between  Theory  and 
Practice,  and  the  like  fig-leaves  of  seeming  Wisdom  where- 
with Folly  is  wont  to  enrobe  herself — but  there  is  in  truth  no 
such  discrepancy.  A  sound  theory  is  always  a  safe  one  —  it 
may  fearlessly  be  reduced  to  practice  and  followed  to  the  end. 
When  a  Statesman  rises  in  your  halls  of  Legislation  and  tells 
you  that  a  certain  theory  is  indeed  sound  and  worthy  of  gen- 
eral acceptance,  but  it  must  be  postponed  in  this  particular 
instance,  because  of  the  depression  of  Trade,  the  distresses 
of  the  Laboring  Classes,  or  on  any  such  ground,  be  sure  that 
either  he  or  his  theory  is  hollow  and  untrustworthy.  More 
probably  both  of  them  are  so.  For,  were  the  theory  sound, 
the  earliest  moment  would  be  the  best  moment  to  reduce  it  to 
practice,  and  whatever  the  embarrassments  existing,  they  but 
furnish  additional  arguments  for  its  instant  adoption.  Their 
existence  argues  a  wrong  somewhere,  and  demands  that  every 
known  wrong  be  instantly  redressed.  To  say  that  a  theory 
is  sound,  and  yet  act  in  contradiction  thereto,  is  to  dethrone 
eternal  Right  and  exalt  a  fleeting,  unstable,  unrighteous  Expe- 
diency in  its  stead.  Whatever  is  true  in  Theory  is  desirable 
in  practice,  and  desirable  to-day. 

But  the  elemental  Free  Trade  assumption  is  not  true. 
'  The  best  government  is '  not  '  that  which  governs  least,'  or 
no  government  at  all  were  clearly  better  still.  ^  Trade  will ' 
not  ^  regulate  itself  so  as  to  secure  even  *the  greatest  good 
of  the  greatest  number,'  though  I  insist  that  it  is  not  the  good 
of  the  greatest  number  but  of  the  whole  number  which  com- 
munities and  governments  are  bound  unceasingly  to  seek  and 
to  secure.  It  is  not  true  that  the  largest  possible  average  or 
general  reward  of  Industry  is  that  which  it  would  secure  in 
the  total  absence  of  Governmental  regulation.  The  grain- 
grower  of  the  valley  of  the  Wabash  or  Illinois,  for  example, 
could  never  receive  the  fullest  reward  of  his  toil,  the  largest 
return  for  his  bounteous  harvests,  while  the  producer  of  his 


20 


cloths,  his  wares,  his  glass,  his  cutlery,  &c.  remained  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  The  fact  that  they  do  remain 
there  compels  a  large  export  thither  of  his  bulky  Agricultural 
staples,  at  an  enormous  cost  for  transportation,  and  inevita- 
bly involves  a  corresponding  and  permanent  depression  of  the 
prices  of  those  staples.  If  England  may  obtain  Wheat  from 
the  Black  Sea  and  the  Baltic  at  an  average  cost  of  one  dollar 
a  bushel,  (as  she  can,  very  nearly,)  then  his  must  be  largely 
sold  in  England  at  that  price,  though  the  cost  of  transporting 
it  thither  amounts  to  three-fourths  of  that  sum.  The  residue, 
small  as  it  is,  must  be  the  standard  price  of  his  wheat  at  the 
point  of  production.  But  change  your  policy  so  as  to  bring 
the  producers  of  most  of  the  fabrics  which  minister  to  his 
convenience  and  comfort  from  Sheffield  and  Birmingham  to 
the  banks  of  his  own  gentle  rivers,  or  of  their  more  impetu- 
ous tributaries,  or  divert  a  portion  of  the  grain-growers  already 
there  into  the  various  pursuits  of  Manufacture,  and  now  you 
have  ensured  a  higher  price  for  Grain  and  a  larger  reward  to 
the  industry  of  its  producer.  He  will  not  merely  receive 
more  money  for  his  yearly  product  than  he  could  have  done 
for  a  long,  indefinite  period  if  Manufactures  had  been  left  to 
grow  up  around  him,  by  the  slow,  capricious  efforts  of 
unaided  individual  enterprise,  exposed  to  the  relentless  hos- 
tility of  their  alarmed  and  skillful,  wealthy  and  powerful  For- 
eign rivals,  but  he  will  receive  a  far  greater  aggregate  of  the 
various  articles  he  desires  in  exchange  for  his  own  surplus 
productions.  The  reason  why  this  is  inevitable  is  that  the 
number  of  actual  producers,  the  amount  of  aggregate  product, 
is  immensely  greater  than  formerly.  Of  a  thousand  workers 
there  were  originally  three  hundred  in  Illinois  producing 
Grain,  two  hundred  in  Europe  fabricating  various  products  to 
be  exchanged  for  the  Grain,  and  the  remaining  five  hundred 
employed  as  wagoners,  boatmen,  sailors,  forwarders,  mer- 
chants, etc.,  in  interchanging  the  Provisions  and  the  Manu- 
factures between  their  respective  producers,  and  living  (as 


21 


they  must)  out  of  the  aggregate  product.  Now,  with  the 
workshops  attracted  to  the  westward  of  the  Alleghenies,  there 
are  but  one  hundred  required  to  effect  those  exchanges, 
releasing  four  hundred  from  various  non-productive  functions, 
and  reinforcing  by  so  many  the  body  of  actual  producers  of 
wealth.  The  consequence,  most  manifestly,  is  an  increased 
production  and  accumulation  of  wealth,  to  be  evinced  not  in 
store-houses  filled  to  bursting  with  unneeded  food  and  cloth- 
ing, but  in  the  improvement  of  wild  or  waste  lands,  the  erec- 
tion of  buildings,  and  the  multiplication  of  books,  schools, 
implements,  and  every  thing  which  conduces  to  human  com- 
fort and  well-being.  There  is  no  mystery,  no  magic,  no 
juggle  in  the  increase  of  National  Wealth  by  an  enlightened 
and  judicious  Protection  of  Home  Industry  —  an  increase  of 
the  wealth  not  of  one  nation  merely,  but  of  the  People  of  all 
Nations.  It  operates  by  giving  Idleness  employment,  and 
rendering  Labor  more  effective.  There  is  nothing  narrow, 
partial,  envious,  exclusive,  in  the  policy  of  Protection,  rightly 
understood  and  rightly  pursued.  That  we  should  systemati- 
cally produce  for  ourselves  and  not  purchase  from  other  coun- 
tries whatever  articles  may  with  substantially  as  little  labor  be 
produced  here  as  elsewhere,  is  the  dictate  not  only  of  a  wise 
Patriotism  but  of  a  generous  Philanthropy.  It  is  the  perma- 
nent, universal  interest  of  the  Toihng  Millions  of  all  climes 
that  the  exchanges  of  their  productions  be  rendered  as  direct, 
simple,  unexpensive,  as  possible ;  but  a  bloated  and  superflu- 
ous Commerce,  regarding  simply  its  own  profits  and  not  the 
general  good,  may,  in  the  absence  of  Protective  Legislation, 
defeat  this  consummation,  or  at  least  postpone  it  for  years. 
We  may  clearly  be  able  —  we  are  able  —  with  our  Home 
Market  secured  to  us  by  such  legislation,  after  vanquishing 
the  difficulties  presented  by  utter  inexperience,  to  fabricate 
our  own  Hardware  and  Glass,  our  Pins  and  Penknives,  much 
cheaper  than  we  could  purchase  them  from  England  —  no 
matter  though  they  were  made  somewhat  lower  there  —  and 


22 


yet  we  should  not  be  able  in  fifty  years  to  naturalize  and  esta- 
blish, under  the  batteries  of  destructive  Foreign  rivalry,  so  as 
to  be  beyond  the  reach  of  its  capricious  competition,  the 
various  arts  and  processes  required  for  their  production.  A 
hundred  farmers  of  Illinois,  combining  or  resolving  singly  to 
purchase  only  Home  Manufactures,  might  not  raise  the  market 
price  of  their  Agricultural  staples  one  per  cent,  though  the 
agreement  of  the  Community,  expressed  through  a  Protective 
Tariff,  to  consume  only  or  mainly  Domestic  fabrics,  securing 
the  Home  Production  of  those  fabrics  and  the  consequent 
Home  Consumption  of  the  Agricultural  staples,  would  inevita- 
bly raise  the  price  of  the  latter  by  fifty  to  a  hundred  per  cent. 
To  repeat,  then,  the  parrot  phrase  that  '  Trade  will  regulate 
itself,'  meaning  that  individual  avarice  and  anarchical  compe- 
tition will  work  out  the  most  beneficent  general  results,  is  a 
futility  unworthy  of  this  enhghtened  age.  As  well  leave  a 
necessary  canal  to  dig  itself,  or  be  scraped  out  from  time  to 
time  by  the  voluntary  efforts  of  those  who  chance  to  live  on 
its  borders.  The  seeming  personal  interest  of  many  of  them 
will  often  be  directly  adverse  to  its  construction  at  all,  im- 
pelling them  to  impede  rather  than  advance  it.  General 
good  is  only  to  be  attained  through  general  effort  —  system- 
atic, harmonious  and  far-sighted.  Left  to  the  mercy  of  indi- 
vidual selfishness  and  caprice,  it  will  rarely  be  compassed  at  all. 

But  I  do  not  merely  challenge  the  Economical  soundness 
of  the  Free  Trade  system  —  my  objection  is  deeper,  broader, 
and  more  vital.  I  object  that  it  fails  to  recognize  and  respect 
the  more  important  use  and  purpose  of  Industrial  effort.  I 
object  that  it  regards  Labor  only  as  a  necessary  means  of 
supplying  Man's  sensual  wants,  and  not  at  all  as  Divinely 
appointed  for  the  discipline  and  development  of  our  Race.  It 
regards  the  Corn  and  the  Cloth  as  the  only  results  of  Indus- 
try ;  and  takes  no  account  of  that  nobler  product,  the  Man. 

It  everywhere  assumes  as  unquestionable  that  if  our  Peo- 
ple, or  those  of  any  section,  as  a  mass,  a  community,  can 


23 


realize  a  greater  aggregate  of  wealth  by  devoting  their  ener- 
gies wholly  to  some  single  function  or  department  of  Industry 

—  the  growing  of  Cotton,  for  example  —  then  it  would  be 
clearly  their  interest  and  duty  to  do  nothing  but  grow  Cotton, 
and  with  this  purchase  everything  else  they  need  or  desire, 
made  ready  for  use  abroad.  But  this  I  most  strenuously 
deny.  We  might  so  have  more  goods  for  a  season,  but  less 
good  —  more  sensual  gratification,  but  less  Intellectual  expan- 
sion and  force.  A  new  art,  a  new  caUing,  introduced  among 
a  people,  is  a  new  seminary  for  that  people.  It  awakens 
inquiry,  elicits  ideas,  suggests  improvements  even  in  old  pro- 
cesses and  inveterate  habits.  It  has  a  decided  value,  though 
not  precisely  calculable  in  dollars  and  cents.  The  boorish- 
ness  of  manners,  the*  vacuity  or  stupor  of  mind,  of  a  youth 
trained  in  the  dull  routine  of  a  single  pursuit  and  ignorant  of 
the  processes  of  all  others,  contrasts  strikingly  with  the  rapid- 
ity of  thought,  freedom  of  manner,  and  fertility  of  resource, 
of  his  fellow  who  has  been  reared  in  observing  contact  with 
the  multiform  processes  of  a  hundred  surrounding  avocations. 
It  is  thus  that  the  City  lad  usually  appears  to  advantage 
beside  the  rustic  who  has  grown  up  in  some  secluded  valley, 
even  when  the  latter  is  the  more  favored  by  nature  and  more 
informed  by  the  study  of  the  schools.  The  vast  domain  of 
Industry  is  and  must  be  the  University  of  the  great  majority 

—  it  is  of  the  highest  public  importance  that  none  shall  be 
restricted  therein  to  a  single  acquirement,  but  that  the  educa- 
tion it  affords  shall  be  diversified  and  thorough. 

But  it  is  not  merely  true  that  the  ultimate  uses  and  full 
beneficence  of  the  Divine  appointment  of  Labor  as  the  proper 
condition  and  essential  element  of  human  development  and 
well-being  can  only  be  realized  where  that  Labor  is  diversified 
and  elevated,  not  monotonous  and  degraded  —  it  is  also  true 
that,  though  the  majority  might  possibly  find  a  pecuniary  and 
sensible  advantage  in  a  National  Industry  restricted  to  one  or 
two  pursuits,  there  would  be  numerous  classes  condemned  to 


24 


helplessness  and  dependence  thereby.  Let  a  whole  commu- 
nity be  purely  Agriculturists,  purely  Iron-workers,  or  entirely 
devoted  to  any  branch  of  Industry,  and  there  must  be  a  large 
proportion  of  its  members  who  from  inadequacy  of  strength 
or  of  skill,  from  considerations  of  age  or  of  sex,  will  be  un- 
suited  for  efficiency  in  that  especial  field  of  effort  —  conse- 
quently, for  the  most  part  idle  or  but  partially  employed  and 
meagrely  rewarded.  There  will  be  seasons  when,  owing  to 
unfavorable  markets,  the  whole  Industry  of  such  a  community 
will  be  suspended  or  unrecompensed,  as  well  as  classes  which 
habitually  earn  little  or  nothing.  Under  such  circumstances, 
the  laborer  becomes  the  thrall  of  the  capitalist,  just  as  the 
Egyptians  did  of  Pharaoh  during  the  seven  years  of  famine ; 
while  those  whose  capacities  are  not  suited  to  the  demands  of 
the  branches  of  industry  there  mainly  pursued,  are  habitually, 
inevitably  dependent  on  others  for  the  means  of  subsistence. 
A  new  branch  of  Industry  naturalized  in  any  country  is  a  vir- 
tual Declaration  of  Independence  for  a  portion  of  its  before 
subject  people.  There  can  be  no  emancipation  of  the  Labor- 
ing Mass  from  a  virtual  bondage  without  a  liberal  and  thor- 
ough diversification  of  Industrial  pursuits  ;  and  though  this  is 
profitable  in  every  way,  it  is  too  vastly  important  to  be 
deferred  to  any  mere  pecuniary  consideration.  If  it  were 
true  that  it  must  cost  us  more,  according  to  the  narrowest  dol- 
lar-and-cent  reckoning,  to  manufacture  for  ourselves  than  to 
buy  of  others  the  products  of  manufacture,  the  interests  of 
Labor  and  of  Man  would  still  imperatively  require  us  to  secure 
the  supplying  of  our  own  wants,  so  far  as  Nature  interposed 
no  obstacle,  by  the  skill  and  effort  of  our  own  People.  Not 
individual  Man  only,  but  the  Nation  as  an  aggregate,  demands 
that  symmetrical  and  thorough  Development  which  is  to  be 
attained  only  through  a  many-sided  Industry. 

You  will  bear  with  one  more  illustration  of  the  blindness 
which  has  befallen  Learning  through  its  divorce  from  Labor. 
I  allude  now  to  the  discussions  which  have  arisen  in  our  day 


25 


respecting  the  organic  Reform  of  Society.  We  of  the  Move- 
ment are  not  surprised  to  hear  from  the  lips  of  Ignorance  and 
a  purbhnd  Selfishness  the  cavils  which  befit  and  bespeak  their 
sources.  We  are  not  surprised  nor  vexed  to  hear  from  such 
that  Industrial  Association  is  but  another  device  to  get  the 
goods  of  the  thrifty  and  prudent  within  the  grasp  of  the 
knavish  and  prodigal  —  that  no  house  was  ever  large  enough 
for  two  families  —  that  no  man  will  work  unless  impelled  to 
it  by  appetite  or  avarice  —  or  any  of  the  sage  and  well-con- 
sidered objections  which  we  are  required  to  meet  as  profound 
novelties,  or  novel  profundities,  day  after  day.  From  the 
class  wherein  such  objections  properly  originate,  we  receive 
and  answer  them  with  indomitable  patience.  Neither  ^re  we 
surprised  that  a  well-meaning  man,  with  a  brain  by  nature  and 
habit  nicely  adjusted  to  the  reception  and  retention  of  one 
idea  at  a  time,  is  afraid  that  if  he  accepts  the  thought  of  a 
Social  condition  based  on  brotherhood  and  love,  he  must 
eject  his  Religion,  or  his  Family  ties,  or  some  other  cherished 
possession,  to  make  room  for  it.  We  see  that  the  man  wants 
expansion  —  he  must  have  more  room  before  he  can  render 
more  hospitality — and  we  are  but  moved  to  more  energetic 
and  untiring  effort  in  the  great  work  of  whose  necessity  he  is 
so  striking  an  evidence.  But  when  the  objections  of  the  ostler 
and  the  nurse  confront  us  from  the  rostrum  and  the  pulpit 
—  when  they  overwhelm  us  in  the  magisterial  dictum  of  the 
Professor  —  when  the  annihilation  that  we  cannot  realize  in 
the  Judge's  argument  overtakes  us  in  the  Judge's  frown  — 
what  shall  we  think  or  say  ?  The  narrowness  and  obliquity 
of  the  depressed  and  benighted  was  saddening;  but  when 
that  which  should  be  light  but  deepens  darkness;  whither 
shall  we  turn  for  a  ray  ?  Whither  but  to  the  great  central 
truth  of  which  we  are  the  imperfect  advocates  ? 

We  of  the  Movement  maintain  a  position  which  need  not  be 

deemed  ambiguous  and  ought  not  to  be  regarded  with  distrust 

or  aversion  by  any  generous,  lofty  mind  —  by  any  hopeful, 

loving  heart.     We   maintain  that  Industry,   now  too  often 

4 


26 


degraded  and  repugnant,  may  be  everywhere  elevated  and 
rendered  attractive,  so  that  not  the  result  only  but  the  process 
shall  be  a  source  of  daily  joy.  We  contend  that  the  anarchy 
between  Labor  and  Capital  which  now  glaringly  prevails  all 
around  us  may  be  replaced  by  a  better  system,  wherein  a 
just  and  settled  proportion  of  product  shall  be  accorded  to 
each,  and  the  present  alienating,  disorganizing,  depraving, 
universal  struggle  to  secure  more  wages  for  less  work  or  more 
work  for  less  wages,  shall  be  banished  forever,  taking  unfaith- 
fulness on  the  one  side  and  extortion  on  the  other  along  with 
it.  We  maintain  that,  in  this  bounteous  creation  of  our  God, 
a  man  standing  idle  for  want  of  employment,  or  even  of 
suitable  employment,  when  there  is  scarcely  a  square  mile  of 
the  earth's  surface  which  would  not  reward  ten  times  the 
labor  ever  yet  bestowed  on  it,  is  a  grievous  wrong  and  a  bitter 
reproach  to  our  whole  Social  Economy,  wherein  the  cunning 
and  the  strong  secure  a  certain  portion  of  comfort  and  luxury 
to  themselves  by  means  which  leave  the  simple  and  the  feeble 
to  famish.  We  contend  that  the  Rights  of  Property  in  the 
earth,  so  wisely  and  necessarily  guaranteed  to  the  fortunate 
possessors,  were  granted  not  that  the  many  might  be  excluded 
from  the  common  source  of  sustenance,  but  that  they  might 
be  enabled  more  securely,  peacefully,  advantageously  to  de- 
rive their  subsistence  therefrom,  and  that  the  Right  to  Labor, 
and  to  receive  the  rewards  of  Labor,  pertains  to  every  indi- 
vidual where  the  right  to  the  Soil,  originally  free  and  common 
to  all,  has  been  granted  away  to  a  part.  We  maintain  that, 
as  no  man,  clearly,  would  have  a  moral  right  to  acquire  the 
ownership  of  all  the  earth  and,  forbidding  any  to  cultivate  or 
dwell  on  it,  starve  the  Race  to  death,  so  no  one  can  have  the 
moral  right  to  do  this  in  part,  by  monopolizing  the  land  and 
keeping  it  unproductive  for  the  gratification  of  his  pomp  and 
avarice,  while  hundreds  around  him  are  suffering  for  the  want 
of  it.  In  fine,  we  hold  that  all  individual  rights  are  held  sub- 
ordinate to  the  demands  of  Universal  Beneficence,  and  though 
Human  Law  may  not  prescribe  the  limits  of  such  rights  and 


27 


provide  against  any  overstepping  them,  yet  the  Divine  Law 
condemns  every  act  which  finds  its  end  in  self-gratification  by 
means  which  trench  on  the  well-being  of  others.  We  main- 
tain that  the  isolated  family  is  not  the  most  perfect  form  of 
the  household  —  that  immense  economies,  both  in  production 
and  consumption,  are  attainable  by  Combined  Effort,  directed 
by  combined  experience  and  wisdom  —  that  a  true  and  full 
Education,  such  as  is  not  possible  under  the  isolated  system, 
will  be  all  but  inevitable  in  the  Combined  Order,  with  its 
schools  beneath  the  common  roof  for  every  department  of 
Knowledge  and  Art,  presided  over  by  instructors  chosen  from 
the  whole  body  because  of  their  observed  and  tested  capacity 
to  teach,  and  not  of  their  indisposition  to  work  —  but,  above 
all,  its  extensive,  infinitely  diversified,  carefully  perfected  pro- 
cesses of  Industry  in  action  all  around  the  young  learner. 
We  maintain  that  only  in  such  a  relation,  based  on  a  pro- 
found sentiment  of  Human  Brotherhood,  can  be  wrought  out 
the  emancipation  of  the  Laboring  Class  from  practical  servi- 
tude and  the  haunting  dread  of  destitution,  —  from  Ignorance, 
Degradation  and  the  apathy  of  departed  Hope.  We  main- 
tain that  for  Woman,  from  infancy  a  toy  or  a  slave,  so  often 
condemned  to  mercenary Xnd  loathed  marriages,  or  a  useless 
and  joyless  loneliness,  by  an  education  and  by  Social  usages 
which  deny  her  the  means  of  essential  independence,  there  is 
no  hope  but  in  a  truer  Social  condition,  and  enlarged  oppor- 
tunities for  Knowledge,  liberal  Culture  and  Industrial  useful- 
ness which  the  Phalanx  alone  can  afford  to  all.  We  maintain 
that  only  in  a  Society  which  puts  an  end  to  the  interminable 
vagrancy  of  Labor  anxiously  seeking  employment,  and  often 
seeking  long  and  hungrily  in  vain  —  which  banishes  Commerce 
and  Wages,  with  their  incessant  temptations  to  selfishness, 
avarice  and  dishonesty,  —  which  secures  Development  and 
Opportunity  to  all,  with  Plenty  and  Comfort  to  every  one  who 
will  use  the  means  he  possesses  of  acquiring  them  —  wherein 
Love  to  God  and  Man  will  constitute  the  moral  atmosphere, 
and  Progress  in  all  good  the  universal  aspiration, — can  the 


28 


benign  purposes  of  Heaven  be  fulfilled  and  the  Destiny  of 
Man  on  earth  accomplished. 

If  there  be  any  who  object  that  the  Social  Movement  of  our 
time  is  defective  in  method  or  in  purpose,  we  simply  invite 
them  to  embrace  and  pursue  it  by  that  better  method,  with 
that  better  purpose,  which  their  criticism  implies.  If  there 
be  any  who  object  that  only  publicans  and  sinners  are  en- 
gaged in  it,  we  ask  them  to  dignify  it  with  their  weight  of 
character  and  hallow  it  with  their  sanctity.  If  they  deem  its 
advocates  heretical  in  faith  or  deficient  in  piety,  how  much 
larger  and  more  inviting  is  the  field  wherever  they  are  called 
to  exemplify  the  influences  of  a  true  faith  and  of  a  saintly  life  ! 
Assuredly,  there  is  no  necessary  heresy  or  impiety  in  effort  to 
supplant  Divergence  by  Convergence  of  Interests  —  to  replace 
envious  Competition  by  generous  Cooperation  —  to  banish 
Strife  and  Want,  and  establish  instead  Concord  and  Plenty  ; 
and  if  any  has  been  engrafted  thereon  by  injudicious  or  incon- 
siderate partisans,  it  will  be  easy  tp  demonstrate  the  fact  by 
an  effort  based  on  better  principles,  and  made  in  a  more 
catholic  spirit.  We  may  be  sure  that  every  sincere,  unselfish 
effort  to  do  good  is  based  on  a  Religion  which  cannot  be  false, 
and  a  Faith  which  takes  hold  on  Heaven. 

Now  it  weighs  httle  with  us  that  those  who  never  thought 
seriously,  candidly,  of  this  subject  for  two  hours,  perceive 
obstacles  in  our  path  which  to  them  seem  insurmountable  — 
for  we  have  traversed  the  quagmires  in  which  they  now 
flounder  and  know  that  they  are  not  impassable.  It  is  no 
tidings  to  us  that  time,  and  effort,  and  sacrifice,  will  be  requi- 
site to  secure  what  we  contemplate,  and  that  the  grave  will 
probably  close  over  the  present  generation  before  half  that  we 
foresee  and  struggle  for  can  be  attained.  Neither  can  failure 
in  practical  trials  discourage  us,  for  we  anticipate  successive 
and  often  mortifying  failures.  The  inadequacy  of  means,  the 
absence  of  that  every-day  wisdom  learned  only  in  the  school 
of  experience,  the  imperfection  of  men,  all  unite  to  assure  us 
on  this  point.     But  we  are  sustained  by  an  undoubting  faith 


29 


that  whatever  of  possible  good  has  been  revealed  to  the  un- 
derstandings of  men  may  be  rendered  practical  by  devoted 
and  patient  exertion.  Through  sacrifices,  discouragements, 
reverses,  and  failures,  the  great  work  steadily  advances  step 
by  step  to  its  ultimate  triumph.  A  hundred  failures  will  not 
suffice  to  arrest  it ;  a  thousand  lives  are  already  pledged  to  its 
steadfast  prosecution ;  and  many  thousands  will  be  ready  ere 
these  are  wholly  spent.  This  wounded,  bleeding  body  of 
Humanity  shall  yet  be  raised  up  and  healed  —  the  benefi- 
cence of  God  has  decreed  it ;  the  silent  transformations  of  the 
ages  have  prepared  the  way  for  it.  For  a  time  may  the 
Priest  and  the  Levite  distrustfully  pass  by  on  the  other  side ; 
but  they  shall  yet  recognize  in  this  the  work  which  they  were 
appointed  to  aid  and  to  compass,  and  shall  exultingly  share 
in  the  glory  and  the  joy  of  its  consummation  ! 

I  have  thus  far  invited  your  attention  to  some  of  the  de- 
fects, as  they  strike  me,  of  our  educational  methods  and  aims, 
as  exemplified  in  the  practical  errors  and  deficiencies  in  which 
they  result.  I  need  not,  surely,  now  reverse  the  picture  and 
exhibit  at  length  the  amendments  I  would  with  diffidence 
suggest.  That  Education  should  be  based  on  Labor  and 
directed  thoroughly,  discriminately,  to  practical  ends  —  this 
is  the  immovable  and  universal  foundation.  If  a  youth  is 
destined  to  be  a  Professor,  a  Physician,  a  Lawyer,  a  Poet,  a 
Clergyman,  let  his  higher  education  at  every  step  contemplate 
that  fact ;  but  let  all  his  education,  from  infancy  to  maturity, 
regard  the  development  and  perfection  of  the  Man.  And 
as  one  battle  contributes  more  than  ten  reviews  or  sham 
engagements  to  form  the  soldier,  so  one  acquirement  which 
commends  itself  to  the  student's  regard  by  a  direct  and  palpa- 
ble utility  shall  prove  of  more  worth  to  him  than  a  dozen 
which  he  is  constrained  to  labor  at  as  part  of  a  prescribed 
routine,  and  (as  he  is  told)  to  "  discipline  his  mind."  It  is 
in  life  only  that  we  learn  how  to  live.  The  great  ends  of  all 
study,  of  all  acquirement,  are  ability  and  disposition  to  dis- 
charge more  effectually  our  duties  as  men  and  as  citizens. 


m 


The  benefits  of  a  true  education  commence  with  the  indi- 
vidual, but  pass  directly  and  inevitably  to  the  community. 
He  who  is  not  a  better  brother,  neighbor,  friend,  and  citizen, 
because  of  his  superior  knowledge,  may  very  well  doubt 
whether  his  knowledge  is  really  superior  to  the  ignorance  of 
the  unlettered  many  around  him.  He  whose  education  has 
not  taught  him  to  shun  Vice  and  loathe  Hypocrisy,  —  has  not 
taught  him  to  prize  lightly  the  pleasures  of  Sense,  the  pos- 
session of  boundless  Wealth,  and  the  pomp  of  Public  Station, 
has  been  taught  to  little  purpose,  and  should  be  sent  back  to 
his  hornbook. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  decry  Ambition.  There  is  a  generous 
and  lofty  aspiration  for  the  blessing  of  the  present,  and  the 
admiring  regard  of  future  generations,  which  has  doubtless 
been  the  main-spring  of  many  a  self-denying  act  of  devotion 
to  human  welfare  —  of  many  an  illustrious  and  eminently 
useful  career.  Let  this  be  held  in  due  honor,  that  those  who 
do  not  find  in  the  consecration  of  their  every  faculty,  every 
hour,  to  the  good  of  their  Race  the  proper  and  ample  reward 
of  such  consecration,  may  unite  in  the  good  work,  though 
from  a  motive  less  exalted.  I  can  comprehend  an  ardent 
desire  for  Public  Station  and  even  for  Riches,  springing  from 
a  consciousness  of  capacity  to  wield  the  power  thence  accru- 
ing to  the  signal  benefit  of  mankind.  It  is  this  which  excuses 
the  thirst  for  oflice  we  often  detect  in  men  who  by  nature  are 
clearly  above  receiving  either  consideration  or  renown  from 
any  post  whatever.  Yet  I  trust  this  will  not  much  longer 
continue  —  that  the  increase  and  diffusion  of  Knowledge, 
ensuring  a  more  just  and  general  discrimination  of  the  real 
from  the  factitious,  will  gradually  work  a  separation  of  real 
Power,  as  well  as  of  popular  homage,  from  Station  undignified 
by  the  Virtue  and  Ability  which  should  be  essential  to  its 
attainment.  Our  Country  has  enjoyed  —  shall  I  say,  has 
enjoyed  ?  —  a  remarkable  example  of  the  impotency  of  mere 
station,  however  lofty,  to  confer  respect  or  substantial  power 
—  may  we  not  hope  that  the  salutary  lesson  will  be  widely 
and  lastingly  heeded  ? 


31 


Yet  I  confess  that  I  find  or  fancy  a  perverted  and  groveling 
Ambition  alarmingly  prevalent  among  our  Educated  Young 
Men,  and  that  the  hope  of  awaking  in  some  minds  a  nobler 
and  loftier  impulse  has  been  instrumental  in  bringing  me  be- 
fore you.  It  seems  to  me  that,  while  our  higher  Culture  is 
far  more  vague  and  indiscriminate  than  I  could  wish  it,  the 
purposes  and  aims  of  those  who  acquire  that  Culture,  are  too 
generally  special  and  personal  to  an  extent  equally  faulty  and 
even  more  pernicious.  Nine-tenths  of  our  Educated  Youth 
pass  through  College  to  fit  themselves  for  this  or  that  profess- 
ion—very rarely  that  they  may  be  simply  better  men.  If 
they  intently  explore  and  unseal  the  fountains  of  Knowledge, 
it  is  not  that  they,  and  all  men,  and  the  parched  earth,  may 
be  freely  refreshed  by  the  bubbling  element,  but  that  they 
may  sell  it  by  the  penny's  worth  to  the  thirsty  wayfarer.  I 
am  not  satisfied  with  the  aspect  here  presented.  I  do  not 
object  to  the  adequate  reinforcement  of  the  Professions  from 
the  ranks  of  the  Educated ;  but  I  demur  to  the  devotion  of 
the  Educated  Class,  of  the  entire  facilities  and  means  of  a  lib- 
eral Culture,  to  the  filling  of  the  Professions.  It  seems  to  me, 
if  not  a  profanation,  at  least  an  impotent  conclusion,  when  a 
young  man  who  has  spent  some  years  in  intimate  and  delight- 
ed communion  with  the  Philosophers,  Poets  and  Sages  of  all 
times,  subsides  into  a  mere  dispenser  of  medicines  or  drawer 
of  declarations.  I  would  not  undervalue  the  Professions  as 
spheres  of  usefulness,  though  I  am  in  small  danger  indeed  of 
overvaluing  them  ;  but  I  insist  that  the  Man  and  the  Scholar 
shall  not  be  swallowed  up  in  the  Lawyer  or  the  Doctor.  I 
insist  that  he  shall  not  consider  the  Profession  the  object  and 
end  of  his  Education,  but  shall  still  employ  the  latter  to 
qualify  him  for  higher  and  more  varied  usefulness  through  all 
the  scenes  of  life.  What  he  has  learned  from  Plato  and 
from  Newton,  from  the  master-minds  of  our  Race,  let  him,  as 
opportunity  shall  offer,  dispense  freely  and  gladly  to  his  less 
favored  neighbors,  till  they  too  shall  recognize  and  bless  pro- 
found Learning  as  the  guidance  and  the  solace  of  mankind. 


32 


I  have  come  naturally  to  the  consideration  of  the  position 
of  the  Educated  Class  in  our  existing  Society,  and  the  influ- 
ence they  therein  exert.  Will  any  contend  that  this  is  what 
it  should  and  must  be  ?  Is  our  Public  Opinion  usually  shaped 
and  directed  by  that  of  the  more  elaborately  Educated  ?  I 
think  no  one  will  pretend  it.  There  are  points  wherein,  no 
settled  or  strenuous  opposition  being  offered,  the  sentiment  of 
the  College-bred  class  is  accordant  with  that  of  the  uneduca- 
ted ;  but  let  a  vital  question  arise,  on  which  the  oracles  of  the 
grog-shops  shall  generally  take  ground  against  the  oracles  of 
the  schools,  and  can  we  hesitate  as  to  which  will  triumph? 
Were  our  Educated  Class  really  the  leader  of  Opinion  in  the 
Country,  could  such  atrocities  as  Lynch-Law  and  Repudia- 
tion ever  be  countenanced  ?  There  is  manifestly  unsoundness 
here  —  evil  which  needs  to  be  probed  and  cured.  The  Edu- 
cated Class  is  far  less  potential  than  it  should  be  ;  the  mischief 
may  be  the  Country's,  but  the  fault  is  primarily  its  own.  Its 
sources  I  have  throughout  been  endeavoring  to  detect  and  ex- 
pose to  your  apprehension.  It  has  been  said  by  one  of  the 
most  eminent  scholars*  of  our  time  and  country  that  "  It  is 
difficult  for  cultivated  Pride  to  put  its  ear  to  the  ground  and 
listen  to  the  teachings  of  lowly  Humanity."  I  see  how  this 
may  be  difficult  for  Pride  of  any  sort,  but  I  deny  that  the  voice 
of  Humanity,  however  lowly,  ought  to  be  less  welcome  or  less 
intelligible  to  the  truly  cultivated  than  to  the  uncultivated  ear 
—  far  otherwise.  But  there  is  a  half-truth  at  the  bottom  of 
this  sentiment,  and  it  bears  to  us  an  admonition.  There  is  too 
little  cordial  sympathy  —  too  little  familiar  and  friendly  inter- 
change of  thought  —  between  the  better  educated  and  the 
imperfectly  instructed.  There  are  too  many  barriers  of  form 
and  usage  between  them.  Each  might  learn  much  from  the 
other  —  profit  much  by  a  nearer  relation.  Each  may  find  ad- 
monition in  the  experiences  of  the  other,  if  freely  imparted. 
In  the  great  convulsions  now  dimly  apprehended  but  certainly 

*  Hon.  Geo.  Bancroft  —  Address  of  Massachusetts  Democratic  Convention. 


33 


at  hand,  the  well-meaning  and  right-thinking  of  each  class 
will  find  a  union  essential  to  both.  That  enlightened  Conser- 
vatism, which  asks  what  it  is  that  we  should  conserve,  and 
what  there  is  of  abuse  or  injustice  that  should  be  cut  away  in 
order  that  what  is  valuable  and  precious  mai/^be  conserved—- 
that  genial  Reform  which  recognizes  Harmony  and  Love  as 
the  elements  of  all  true  Progress,  and  shrinks  from  any 
changes  impelled  by  Hatred  and  compassed  through  Disorder 
—  are  learning  to  know  each  other  as  brethren  and  natural 
allies.  On  the  altar  of  a  common  danger,  a  common  interest, 
may  their  union  be  indissolubly  consummated  ! 

I  have  said  that  the  practical  and  treasured  acquirement  of 
the  Educated  Glass  seems  to  me  too  special  and  individual, 
while  their  culture  appears  indiscriminate  and  general.  Here 
in  one  of  our  rural  townships  is  a  limited  number  of  persons 
— perhaps  ten  or  twenty  —  who  have  enjoyed  the  benefits  of 
a  College  education.  Their  literary  acquirement  of  course 
far  surpasses  that  of  the  great  mass  around  them.  But  how 
are  their  neighbors  and  townsmen  permitted  to  realize  this  ? 
Is  it  not  quite  common  that  their  only  experience  of  it  is 
based  on  the  hard  words  in  an  attorney's  twenty  fohos  or  an 
apothecary's  account  —  words  subsidiary  to  a  still  harder 
charge  at  the  bottom  of  it  ?  May  we  not  hope  that  this  shall 
be  amended  ?  —  that  the  Educated  Class  shall  yet  be  related 
to  the  less  instructed  many  in  a  manner  very  different  from 
this  ?  Why  should  not  this  class  create  an  atmosphere,  not 
merely  of  exemplary  morals  and  refined  manners,  but  of 
palpable  utility  and  blessing  ?  Why  should  not  the  Clergy- 
man, the  Doctor,  the  Lawyer,  of  a  country  town  be  not 
merely  the  patrons  and  commenders  of  every  generous  idea, 
the  teachers  and  dispensers  of  all  that  is  novel  in  Science  or 
noble  in  Philosophy  —  exemplars  of  Integrity,  of  Amenity, 
and  of  an  all-pervading  Humanity  to  those  around  them  — 
but  even  in  a  more  material  sphere  regarded  and  blessed  as 
universal  benefactors  ?  Why  should  they  not  be  universally  — 
as  I  rejoice  to  say  that  some  of  them  are  —  models  of  wisdom 
5 


34 


and  thrift  in  Agriculture  —  their  farms  and  gardens  silent  but 
most  effective  preachers  of  the  benefits  of  forecast,  calculation, 
thorough  knowledge  and  faithful  application  ?  Nay,  more  : 
Why  should  not  the  Educated  Class  be  everywhere  teachers, 
through  lectures,  essays,  conversations,  as  well  as  practically, 
of  those  great  and  important  truths  of  Nature,  which  Chem- 
istry and  other  sciences  are  just  reveahng  to  bless  the  Indus- 
trial world  ?  Why  should  they  not  unobtrusively  and  freely 
teach  the  Farmer,  the  Mechanic,  the  Worker  in  any  capacity, 
how  best  to  summon  the  blind  forces  of  the  elements  to  his 
aid  and  how  most  effectually  to  render  them  subservient  to 
his  needs  ?  All  this  is  clearly  within  the  power  of  the  Edu- 
cated Class,  if  truly  educated  ;  all  is  clearly  within  the  sphere 
of  duty  appointed  them  by  Providence.  Let  them  but  do  it, 
and  they  will  stand,  where  they  ought  to  stand,  at  the  head 
of  the  community,  the  directors  of  Public  Opinion  and  the 
universally  recognized  benefactors  of  the  Race. 

I  stand  before  an  audience  in  good  part  of  Educated*  men, 
and  I  plead  for  the  essential  Independence  of  their  class  — 
not  for  their  sakes  only  or  mainly,  but  for  the  sake  of  Man- 
kind. I  see  clearly,  or  I  am  strangely  bewildered,  a  deep- 
rooted  and  wide-spreading  evil  which  is  palsying  the  influence 
and  paralyzing  the  exertions  of  Intellectual  and  even  Moral 
superiority  all  over  our  Country.  The  Lawyer,  so  far  at  least 
as  his  livelihood  is  concerned,  is  too  generally  but  a  lawyer ; 
he  must  live  by  law  or  he  has  no  means  of  living  at  all.  So 
with  the  Doctor ;  so,  alas  !  with  the  Pastor  !  He,  too,  often 
finds  himself  surrounded  by  a  large,  expensive  family,  few  or 
none  of  whom  have  been  systematically  trained  to  earn  their 
bread  in  the  sweat  of  their  brows,  and  who,  even  if  approach- 
ing maturity  in  life,  lean  on  him  for  a  subsistence.  This  son 
must  be  sent  to  an  academy,  and  that  one  to  College ;  this 
daughter  to  an  expensive  boarding-school,  and  that  must  have 
a  piano  —  and  all  to  be  defrayed  from  his  salary,  which,  how- 
ever liberal,  is  scarcely  or  barely  adequate  to  meet  the  de- 
mands upon  it.     How  shall  this  man  —  for  man,  after  all,  he 


35 


is  —  with  expenses,  and  cares,  and  debts  pressing  upon  him 
—  hope  to  be  at  all  times  faithful  to  the  responsibilities  of  his 
high  calling?  He  may  speak  ever  so  fluently  and  feelingly 
against  sin  in  the  abstract,  for  that  cannot  give  offence  to  the 
most  fastidiously  sensitive  incumbent  of  the  richly  furnished 
hundred-dollar  pews.  But  will  he  dare  to  rebuke  openly, 
fearlessly,  specially,  the  darling  and  decorous  vices  of  his  most 
opulent  and  liberal  parishioners  —  to  say  to  the  honored  dis- 
penser of  liquid  poison,  "  Your  trade  is  murder,  and  your 
wealth  the  price  of  perdition!" — To  him  who  amasses 
wealth  by  stinting  honest  Labor  of  its  reward  and  grinding 
the  faces  of  the  Poor,  "  Do  not  mock  God  by  putting  your 
reluctant  dollar  into  the  Missionary  box  —  there  is  no  such 
heathen  in  New  Zealand  as  yourself!"  —  and  so  to  every 
specious  hypocrite  around  him,  who  patronizes  the  church  to 
keep  to  windward  of  his  conscience  and  freshen  the  varnish 
on  his  character,  '  Thou  art  the  man  ! '  I  tell  you,  friends ! 
he  will  not,  for  he  cannot  afford  to,  be  thoroughly  faithful! 
One  in  a  thousand  may  be,  and  hardly  more.  We  do  not 
half  comprehend  the  profound  significance  of  that  statute  of 
the  old  Church  which  inflexibly  enjoins  celibacy  on  her 
Clergy.  The  very  existence  of  the  Church,  as  a  steadfast 
power  above  the  multitude,  giving  law  to  the  People  and  not 
receiving  its  law  day  by  day  from  them,  depends  on  its  main- 
tenance. And  if  we  are  ever  to  enjoy  a  Christian  Ministry 
which  shall  systematically,  promptly,  fearlessly  war  upon 
every  shape  and  disguise  of  evil  —  which  shall  fearlessly 
grapple  with  War  and  Slavery,  and  every  loathsome  device 
by  which  man  seeks  to  glut  his  appetites  at  the  expense  of  his 
brother's  well-being,  it  will  be  secured  to  us  through  the  in- 
strumentality of  the  very  Reform  I  advocate  —  a  Reform 
which  shall  render  the  clergyman  independent  of  his  parish- 
ioners, and  enable  him  to  say  manfully  to  all,  "You  may 
cease  to  pay,  but  I  shall  not  cease  to  preach,  so  long  as  you 
have  sins  to  reprove,  and  I  have  strength  to  reprove  them ! 
I  live  in  good  part  by  the  labor  of  my  hands,  and  can  do  so 


36 


wholly  whenever  that  shall  become  necessary  to  the  fearless 
discharge  of  my  duty  !  " 

A  single  illustration  more,  and  I  draw  this  long  dissertation 
to  a  close.  I  shall  speak  now  more  directly  to  facts  within 
my  own  knowledge,  and  which  have  made  on  me  a  deep  and 
mournful  impression.  I  speak  to  your  experience,  too, 
friends  of  the  Phoenix  and  Union  Societies  —  to  your  future  if 
not  to  your  past  experience  —  and  I  entreat  you  to  heed  me  I 
Every  year  sends  forth  from  our  Colleges  an  army  of  brave 
youth,  who  have  nearly  or  quite  exhausted  their  little  means 
in  procuring  what  is  termed  an  education,  and  must  now  find 
some  remunerating  employment  to  sustain  them  while  they 
are  more  specially  fitting  themselves  for  and  inducting  them- 
selves into  a  Profession.  Some  of  them  find  and  are  perforce 
contented  with  some  meagre  clerkship  ;  but  the  great  body  of 
them  turn  their  attention  at  once  to  Literature  —  to  the 
instruction  of  their  juniors  in  some  school  or  family,  or  to  the 
instruction  of  the  world  through  the  Press.  Hundreds  of 
them  hurry  at  once  to  the  cities  and  the  journals,  seeking 
employment  as  essayists  or  collectors  of  intelligence — bright 
visions  of  Fame  in  the  foreground,  and  the  gaunt  wolf  Famine 
hard  at  their  heels.  Alas  for  them  !  they  do  not  see  that  the 
very  circumstances  under  which  they  seek  admission  to  the 
calling  they  have  chosen  almost  forbid  the  idea  of  their 
succeeding  in  it.  They  do  not  approach  the  public  with 
thoughts  struggling  for  utterance,  but  with  stomachs  craving 
bread.  They  seek  the  Press,  not  that  they  may  proclaim 
through  it  what  it  would  cost  their  lives  to  repress,  but  that 
they  may  preserve  their  souls  to  their  bodies,  at  some  rate. 
Do  you  not  see  under  what  immense  disadvantages  one  of  this 
band  enters  upon  his  selected  vocation,  if  he  has  the  rare 
fortune  to  find  or  make  a  place  in  it  ?  He  is  surrounded, 
elbowed  on  every  side  by  anxious  hundreds,  eager  to  obtain 
employment  on  any  terms ;  he  must  write  not  what  he  feels, 
but  what  another  needs  ;  must  '  regret'  or  *  rejoice'  to  order, 
working  for  the  day,  and  not  venturing  to  utter  a  thought 


37 


which  the  day  does~not  readily  approve.  And  can  you  fancy 
that  is  the  foundation  on  which  to  build  a  lofty  and  durable 
renown  —  a  brave  and  laudable  success  of  any  kind  ?  I  tell 
you,  no,  young  friends !  —  the  farthest  from  it  possible. 
There  is  scarcely  any  position  more  perilous  to  generous 
impulses  and  lofty  aims  —  scarcely  any  which  more  immi- 
nently threatens  to  sink  the  Man  in  the  mere  schemer  and 
striver  for  subsistence  and  selfish  gratification.  I  say,  then, 
in  deep  earnestness,  to  every  youth  who  hopes  or  desires  to 
become  useful  to  his  Race  or  in  any  degree  eminent  through 
Literature,  Seek  first  of  all  things  a  position  of  pecuniary  inde- 
pendence ;  leain  to  live  by  the  labor  of  your  hands,  the  sweat 
of  your  face,  as  a  necessary  step  toward  the  career  you 
contemplate.  If  you  can  earn  but  three  shillings  a  day  by 
rugged  yet  moderate  toil,  learn  to  live  contentedly  on  two 
shillings,  and  so  preserve  your  mental  faculties  fresh  and 
unworn  to  read,  to  observe,  to  think,  thus  preparing  yourself 
for  the  ultimate  path  you  have  chosen.  At  length,  when. a 
mind  crowded  with  discovered  or  elaborated  truths  will  have 
utterance,  began  to  write  sparingly  and  tersely  for  the  nearest 
suitable  periodical  —  no  matter  how  humble  and  obscure  — 
if  the  thought  is  in  you,  it  will  find  its  way  to  those  who  need 
it.  Seek  not  compensation  for  this  utterance  until  compen- 
sation shall  seek  you ;  then  accept  it  if  an  object,  and  not 
involving  too  great  sacrifices  of  independence  and  disregard 
of  more  immediate  duties.  In  this  way  alone  can  something 
like  the  proper  dignity  of  the  Literary  Character  be  restored 
and  maintained.  But  while  every  man  who  either  is  or 
believes  himself  capable  of  enlightening  others,  appears  only 
anxious  to  sell  his  faculty  at  the  earliest  moment  and  for  the 
largest  price,  I  cannot  hope  that  the  Public  will  be  induced  to 
regard  very  profoundly  either  the  lesson  or  the  teacher. 

Graduates,  Students  of  Hamilton  College  !  a  parting  word 
with  you !  Some  of  you  have  completed  your  studies  and 
are  now  passing  out  into  the  actual  world,  to  be  followed  in 
successive   years   by   your   brethren  whom  you   now  leave 


38 


behind  you.  I  will  not  doubt  that  you  bid  adieu  to  these 
scenes  with  lofty  purposes  of  usefulness  —  with  a  proper 
appreciation  of  the  advantages  over  the  great  mass  of  your 
countrymen  which  have  been  here  afforded  you,  and  of  the 
obligations  which  these  advantages  draw  after  them.  I  am 
not  so  far  removed  from  youth  as  to  have  forgotten  all  its 
sanguine  visions  and  generous  aspirations.  I  bid  you  cherish 
them  each  and  all,  for  they  are  wiser  than  the  cold  lesson 
which  disappointment  and  experienced  treachery  may  after- 
ward teach  us.  O  be  assured,  above  all  things,  that  no 
generous  and  self-forgetting  aspiration  can  ever  be  unwise  or 
mistaken  while  the  Universe  obeys  a  sceptre  and  Earth 
revolves  beneath  the  eye  of  a  benignant  Father !  I  know 
not  whether  I  may  hope  in  this  hurried  communion  to  have 
implanted  in  one  breast  a  clearer  or  nobler  idea  of  the  true 
purposes  and  aims  of  Life  —  I  may  not  confidently  trust  that 
I  have  imparted  to  one  mind  a  deeper  disdain  of  those 
bubbles  surnamed  Luxury,  Ease,  Wealth,  Power,  Popularity, 
Honors,  by  which  many  an  ardent  and  capacious  soul  has 
been  deluded  to  its  ruin.  But  you  are  by  position  Scholars, 
and  by  virtue  of  that  position  you  must  realize  —  at  least,  in 
your  calmer  and  better  moments,  when  that  which  is  immor- 
tal is  not  stifled  within  you  —  that  a  true  Life  is  the  one  thing 
desirable  to  Man  on  earth,  for  and  in  itself — that  Virtue, 
being  truly  suehy  transcends  all  idea  of  reward,  and  becomes 
to  the  spiritual  What  gravitation  is  to  the  material  world  —  a 
law  which  will  not  be  evaded.  He  who  truly,  fully  appre- 
hends the  one  fact  that  God  reigns  knows  all  that  can  be 
of  morality  — knows  that  no  conceivable  divergence  from  the 
line  of  strictest  rectitude,  of  loftiest  endeavor,  can  possibly  be 
otherwise  than  calamitous  in  and  of  itself,  wholly  apart  from 
all  extraneous  conditions  and  consequences.  I  shall  not, 
then,  exhort  you  to  follow  Purity  and  Righteousness,  since  the 
admonition  would  imply  a  possible  ignorance  on  your  part  of 
the  existence  of  the  All-Wise  —  of  the  laws  of  your  own  being. 
But  I  may  warn  you,  friends  1  of  the  mistake  so  commonly 


39 


made  by  our  educated  youth  of  lingering  long  by  the  wayside 
of  active  life,  under  the  pretence  —  very  often  alleged  in  good 
faith  —  of  a  w^ant  of  opportunity.  O,  deceive  not  yourselves 
thus,  young  men !  To  the  rightly  constituted  mind,  to  the 
truly  developed  Man,  there  always  is,  there  always  must  be  op- 
portunity —  opportunity  to  be  and  to  learn,  nobly  to  do  and  to 
endure  —  and  what  matter  whether  with  pomp,  and  eclat, 
with  sound  of  trumpets  and  shout  of  applauding  thousands, 
or  in  silence  and  seclusion,  beneath  the  calm,  discerning  gaze 
of  Heaven  ?  O  realize  that  no  station  can  be  humble  on 
which  that  gaze  is  approvingly  bent  —  that  no  work  can  be 
ignoble  which  is  performed  uprightly  and  not  impelled  by 
sordid  and  selfish  aims.  It  is  a  vital  defect  of  our  Society 
and  our  Culture,  which  you  are  bound  to  wrestle  against  and 
to  overcome,  that  while  an  immensity  of  effort  is  ever  needed, 
of  true  work  remains  undone,  we  are  too  generally  dissatisfied 
with  that  which  lies  broad  and  plain  before  us,  and  waste  our 
hours  in  seeking  long  and  far  for  something  loftier  and  nobler. 
We  wander  to  the  Poles  and  the  Antipodes,  vainly  seeking 
for  that  which  to  the  man  at  peace  with  himself  is  every- 
where, to  the  unquiet  nowhere.  Vainly  sighing  for  the 
opportunity  of  some  other,  which  his  genius  and  ready  accept- 
ance have  made  the  basis  of  an  illustrious  and  dazzling  career, 
we  neglect  and  sacrifice  our  own.  We  speak  regretfully  of 
the  age  of  Chivalry,  the  age  of  Heroism  or  of  perilous  and 
doubtful  struggle  for  Freedom,  as  if  we  did  not  recognize  that 
Man's  struggle  with  darkness  and  evil  is  ever  in  progress,  and 
that  to  render  any  age  one  of  heroism  nothing  is  wanting 
but  heroic  souls.  Waiting  for  the  dead  Past  to  be  acted  over 
again  for  our  selfish  gratification  and  aggrandizement,  we 
suffer  the  precious  and  living  Present  to  ghde  away  from  us, 
undervalued  and  unimproved.  Says  a  deep,  fearless  thinker^ 
of  our  time,  "  To-Day  is  a  king  in  disguise.  To-Day  always 
looks  common  and  trivial,  in  the  face  of  a  uniform  experience 

'^  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  —  Lecture  on  '  the  Times.' 


40 


that  all  great  and  happy  actions  have  been  made  up  of  these 
same  blank  To-Days.  Let  us  unmask  the  king  as  he  passes." 
Yes,  my  young  friends,  here  is  our  high  privilege  and  our 
imperative  duty  —  to  discern  and  honor  the  disguised  angels 
vv^hom  God  is  ever  sending  to  illumine  and  bless  his  earth. 
Not  from  among  the  children  of  monarchs,  ushered  into  being 
vrith  boom  of  cannon  and  shouts  of  revehng  millions,  but 
from  amid  the  sons  of  obscurity  and  toil,  cradled  in  peril 
and  ignominy  —  from  the  bulrushes  and  the  manger  come 
forth  the  benefactors  and  saviours  of  Mankind.  So  when  all 
the  babble  and  glare  of  our  age  shall  have  passed  into  a  fitting 
oblivion  —  vi^hen  those  who  have  enjoyed  rare  opportunities 
and  swayed  vast  empires,  and  been  borne  through  life  on  the 
shoulders  of  shouting  multitudes,  shall  have  been  laid  at  last 
to  rest  in  golden  coffins,  to  moulder  forgotten,  the  stately 
marble  their  only  monuments,  it  will  be  found  that  some 
humble  youth,  who  neither  inherited  nor  found  but  hewed  out 
his  opportunities,  has  uttered  the  thought  which  shall  render 
the  age  memorable  by  extending  the  means  of  enlightment 
and  blessing  to  our  Race.  The  great  struggle  for  Human 
Progress  and  Elevation  proceeds  noiselessly,  often  unnoted, 
often  checked  and  apparently  baffled,  amid  the  clamorous  and 
debasing  strifes  impelled  by  greedy  selfishness  and  low  ambi- 
tion. In  that  struggle,  maintained  by  the  wise  and  good  of 
all  parties,  all  creeds,  all  climes,  I  call  you  to  bear  the  part  of 
men.  Heed  the  lofty  summons,  not  the  frail  messenger,  and, 
with  souls  serene  and  constant,  prepare  to  tread  boldly  in  the 
path  of  highest  duty.  So  shall  Life  be  to  you  truly  exalted 
and  heroic ;  so  shall  Death  be  a  transition  neither  sought  nor 
dreaded  ;  so  shall  your  memory,  though  cherished  at  first  but 
by  a  few  humble,  loving  hearts,  linger  long  and  gratefully  in 
human  remembrance,  a  watchword  to  the  truthful  and  an 
incitement  to  generous  endeavor,  freshened  by  the  proud 
tears  of  admiring  affection,  and  fragrant  with  the  odors  of 
Heaven ! 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 


LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


29JUN'^9AB 


HflY3-'Bfi-10A|yt 


LOAN  PEPT. 


'N  STACKS 


JON  151959 


REC'D  LD 


JULi    i959 


:^^W7^ 


KUgg'^  US 


JAN  3   1960 


MAY  1 6  1968 


LD21A-50m-9,'58 
(6889sl0)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


Gaylamount 

Pamphlet 

Binder 

Gaylord  Bros..  Inc. 

Stockton,  Calif. 

T.  M.  Reg.  U.S.  Pat.  Off. 


Y.C !  O^-^f^^ 


